Morning Must-Read: Carter Price: Is a Line of Code More Like a Factory or a Painting?
The smart young dude Carter Price nails one to the wall and to the floor at the same time! Something very pertinent–and important:
…in most cases rapid technological advancement decreases wages and raises inequality…. If we believe that once code is written, it is good forever (maybe with a few tweaks or upgrades over time), then the stock of code would grow rapidly. If that stock of code is a substitute for future code, then demand for high-tech workers would decrease over time… push down wages not just for high-tech workers but also for other workers…. But… what if it is more like art?… We have more than a hundred years of movies, but new movies are still produced and make lots of money. Coders are still producing new video games despite no one needing to rewrite Tetris…. Technology has not led to mass unemployment and immiseration of labor in the past, yet the very nature of technological development means each invention and advancement is new… [and so] the this-time-is-different argument is generally pertinent, but cannot easily be verified a priori…